ARCHIGRAM - A Guide to ArchigramBy Dennis Crompton

In the decade of the Beatles and the moon landing,
cybernetics, and megacities, Archigram invented new artifacts and
situations and threatened the discipline of architecture itself:
Walking Cities, Plug-in-Universities, and Inflatable
Dwellings.

At once poetic and technological, utopian and grounded in social
need, their projects embodied the avant-garde architecture of the
1960s.

This Guide is a compact history of the work that influenced a
whole generation of architects. It includes their best-known
schemes and draws together for the first time articles on a wide
variety of contemporary subjects, allowing a new generation to
discover their vision of a sophisticated humanity and a refined
technology working in harmony to make a better world.

Archigram was, beyond everything, immensely
creative. I don't think we have to be shy about that. When the
group was first formed in 1964 it consisted of six men who ranged
in temperament from the laconic to the bright-eyed, and in age and
experience from the hardened builders of local authority schools
and public buildings, to young architects who were in their first
jobs after school./ Peter Cook, London 2012
Excerpted from the foreword

1961 A new generation of architecture must arise - with forms
which seem to reject precepts of modern.

1962 Peter Cook & David Greene Nottingham Shopping
Centre

1963 Living City

In the Living City man is the ultimate subject and principal
conditioner. The theme is interpreted by presenting evocations,
accentuations and simulations of city life, not a display of
suggested forms. The image is a total image of it all like a
film.

1964 Zoom and Real Architecture.

Is it possible for the space-comic's future to relate once again
with buildings-as-built?

We return to the preoccupation of the first
Archigram - a search for ways out of the stagnation of the
architectural scene, where the continuing malaise is not just with
the mediocrity of the object, but, more seriously, with the
self-satisfaction of the profession backing up such
architecture./ Peter Cook

1966 Seaside Bubbles
Leisure Study by Ron Herron

1967 A Family is Made Up of Individuals.

1968 Ideas Circus

Scheme: To institute a standard package of five or six
vehiclesthat contain all the equipment necessary to set up a
seminar, conference, exhibition, teach-inThe package can be
attached to an existing building, plugging-in to such facilities as
are there and using the shelter of existing rooms for circus
equipment. or display.

1969 Manzak

Manzak is an idea for a radio-controlled, battery-powered
electric automaton. It has onboard logic, optical range-finder, TV
camera, and magic eye bump detectors. All the sensory equipment you
need for environmental information retrieval, and for performing
tasks.

1971 A Gambling Room for a Summer Casino competition.

1972 It's a..............?
It's not a University - it can't be...show me, where's the
building. Where's the label?

Just what was it that made Archigram so
radical?

If we answer this question without nostalgia, we
will be able to determine the groups place in history - and, in the
process, rediscover the relevance of their architecture today./ Herbert Lachmayer